The official WotC links end in 404's. What's the status of these two magazines? Are there going to be 5e print versions? Would love to give some Christmas gift subscriptions this year.
I doubt you will ever see a print magazine again and it seems they do not have the staff to do a PDF/online version.
The last official word we had on them was that they were going on hiatus.
As for the 404 error message, the links for a lot of things got messed up when they redesigned the site a few months ago.
It takes some doing but you can still get to the magazines:
http://archive.wizards.com/dnd/Tool.aspx?x=dnd/4new/tool/dungeonmagazine
http://archive.wizards.com/dnd/Tool.aspx?x=dnd/4new/tool/dragonmagazine
The print magazines are dead, because publishing a magazine these days is, well, stupid. I imagine WotC is shopping around for someone to licence the magazines too, but this is hard as there's few publishers in the position to attempt a monthly product of that scope.
That's really too bad. Some magazines are really meant to be collected in physical copy.
Maybe with the resurgence in RPGs somebody will decide it's worth it again.
The_Jester wrote:
Shasarak wrote:
I am completely torn.
One part of me would like to see new Dragon and Dungeon magazines, but another part of me knows that hitting a monthly deadline with any mechanical details is going to result in poorly tested rules bits with wildly varying quality. A solution to which might be to simply not have the magazine be monthly, or to not include any new mechanical pieces as a standard feature and only put them in after they have had lengthy testing, but either of those solutions might reduce the value of the magazine to other potential subscribers.
Another part of me would love to see a collection of magazines building up on my shelf next to the core books... but then I quickly remember the ads to content ratio necessary in order to make a physical magazine, and I don't want 1-1/2 ads to every article.
AaronOfBarbaria wrote:
I loved both Dragon and Dungeon printed magazines. I still have piles of both.
However, they were of their time.
I did not get into D&D Insider as I wasn't playing 4E.
However i would not like to see any form of monthly magazine that adds rules to the games, especially new classes, races, weapons, magic items or spells, as these were often responsible for power creep.
Maybe good encounters, articles about game worlds (which may break the above if they were world specific, such as Warforged in Eberron), maybe fiction. Official Sage advice would be good also.
It would be online due to costs.
It could be a way for WOTC to find new talent, as the magazines used to.
Just a few ideas for now.
I would really like Dungeon to make a comeback at least, if for no other reason than because it's a great resource for adventure content for time-strapped DMs.
Personally, I would love to see Dungeon and Dragon be used as playtest-materials for quality control/assurance..... Offer new mechanics, and let the player base iron out the bugs before releasing them "officially" in an upcoming splatbook.
The dev's will not think of every single exploit of any newly released mechanics, yet you can be certain that at least one gamer will catch it, and they can adjust the rule accordingly.
The_Jester wrote:
AaronOfBarbaria wrote:
I miss my print Dragon and Dungeon magazines... And my MTV that played videos—all day long.
Whether pdf or other type of ebook, I really think that it would be important to bring back Dragon and Dungeon (let's face, we'll never get them in print again, unless they provide some sort of print on demand option—which would be really hip). Like the old mags, they'd be a great vehicle for community created material, rules discussions, setting material and such.
Azzy1974 wrote:
AaronOfBarbaria wrote:
I was a longtime reader and collector of Dragon. The magazine was just fun. It was my connection (if you will) with the hobby at large. This was well before the internet o' course. I don't enjoy the internet near as much 
.
But I get it. Newstand magazines are a thing of the past. "Digital initiative", D&D Insider, whatever, is the way to go. As I understand it, starting up a magazine can cost upwards of $1,000,000. That's alotta damn zeroes. So, once they decided gank the print mags, that was it.
Still, I enjoyed the hell outta Dragon. I bought each issue off the newstand, month-after-month, for years and years. Never missed a single issue. That I miss .
= = =
I can't imagine D&D without Dragon, without Dungeon. I'd be very surprised if they don't show up in some form or other (eventually). I get the sinking feeling however, that they have a lot on their plate right now and that the magazines are on the back burner. Not much has changed, that's exactly how D&D Insider was handled. I sincerely hope for better.
Shasarak wrote:
I do miss Dragon and Dungeon magazine. They were sort of iconic. I'm not sure if the magazine format is dead or not. I get that the internet has eliminated magazines as the primary medium for information sharing, and that's probably a good thing, but I still feel like there's a need for monthly quality content.
I know people using http://www.patreon.com/ have had some success with routine content creation.